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The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced the awarding of its Young Investigator Grants valued at more than $13.8 million to 200 of the world’s most promising young scientists. The grants, awarded annually, support the work of early-career scientists with innovative ideas for groundbreaking neurobiological research seeking to identify causes, improve treatments and develop prevention strategies for psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Won received the grant for research in genetic regulation. She hypothesizes that portions of the genome that confer unusual risk impact psychiatric conditions through complex gene regulatory networks. Dr. Won’s project aims to unravel the gene regulatory landscape of the human brain to discover biological mechanisms of how risk variants drive gene expression patterns underlying psychiatric disorders. Dr.Won will utilize brain enhancer maps and statistical algorithms to prioritize regulatory variants that may underlie or indicate psychiatric conditions, then leverage chromatin interaction maps and other methods to assign schizophrenia risk variants to potential target genes. The functional relationship between non-coding variants and target genes will be explored.

For the official press release made by The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, click here.

For a full list of the 2018 NARSAD Young Investigator Grantees, click here.